On 2011-03-20 Justin wrote:
> On Sat, Mar 19, 2011 at 7:54 PM, Lukas <1lukas1@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Hi Emil,
> >
> > Well, KDE is not an organization.
> >
> > But KDE e.V. is
> >
> > So there is no way you can force KDE
> >
> > Force? Never had such idea :)
> >
> > Also, you cant assign tasks
> >
> > It's more like self-assigning, like in bugzilla
> >
> >> and ask for reports from kde developers.
> >
> > reports are done automatically
> >
> > Also, as far as i can see, kde developers are happy about their
> > current
> >
> >> workflow (bugs.kde.org for managing issues and bugs, mailing list
> >> for discussions and irc for real time discussions) and they are
> >> already going through a huge change to their workflow (svn to git
> >> migration).
> >
> > Each tool is made for different tasks. PMS has its own (but some
> > overlaps, of course).
> >
> > The reason, why I even started thinking about PMS, is the promo
> > itself (suggesting to apply to entire KDE community was a bit
> > premature) - as far as I know, mailing lists + wiki are the mail
> > tools used here.
> >
> > In such work flow, PMS fits well. teamworkpm.net offers free
> > service for 2 projects. Enough for medium sized team?
> >
> > So will there be interest of trying any PMS service? If it wouldn't
> > gain any benefits - I'll be the first to voter for dropping it
>
> Hi Lukas,
>
> I'm thinking that as some others have pointed out, we already have a
> lot of tools in place for things like code management, feature/bug
> tracking, and communication. However I do agree with you that
> having some sort of tool that helps keep other types of projects on
> track could be handy. I'm thinking stuff like planning for major
> conferences (akademy, camp kde, etc) or for managing the launch of
> things like our "Join the game" campaign. Those are situations where
> we have a need that doesn't really fit in the context of these other
> tools. I suppose you could "manage" a project on a wiki but
> obviously that requires a lot of work to setup all the pages to
> track the tasks and do all the things that project management
> software could do.
>
> So I see a few potential ways to move your idea forward.
>
> 1) As Ingo mentioned there is a very strong preference towards Free
> Software (not just as in beer), but we have used proprietary options
> when nothing else is available. Our heavy reliance on Google docs
> comes to mind, though we now have Etherpad as a Free option (though
> only for plain text docs really - no spreadsheets/databases/etc).
> Anyways one idea would be to approach Claudia Rauch (the KDE e.V.
> office manager) to see if she might find something like this useful.
> I could see some potential benefit to the types of projects that
> she works on along with the e.V. interns who are hired to help her
> out. They're not typically doing any coding, but instead are
> working on more traditional business projects on the e.V.'s behalf.
>
> 2) Another potential opportunity would be for you to get involved in
> the planning process of the conferences I mentioned and then utilize
> one of these project management tools to help keep everyone
> organized. E.g. you decide to help with the Desktop Summit planning
> stuff (I'm not sure how far along that is exactly) and tell the
> group that you're willing to track all the tasks for them and
> collect information on their intended due dates and dependencies.
> You will certainly not be able to tell other people they have to use
> it, but if you do the leg work to setup the software with that type
> of information for them and make it a valuable resource then I think
> you'll find that organizers would eventually participate in using it
> as well out of pure convenience.
>
> 3) In a perfect world, you might even consider taking your experience
> with something like #2 above and then using it to build requirements
> out for a Free Software implementation of this type of tool. Then
> all you'd need to do is find a developer or two that found your
> project planning assistance helpful and see if you can convince them
> to take action towards building it
>
> :)
>
> Hope that is helpful. Let me know if you want contact info to
> discuss with Claudia. She would be a good person to let you know
> how the DS planning is going as well in case you'd like to help with
> that.
>
> -Justin
Let me add a little note to this. Unless a tool SAVES time and work UP FRONT (not "but if you plan it saves you work", that argument won't work) it is very unlikely to be used.
In other words, forget about additional planning and tracking. If you can integrate planning & tracking tools into existing infrastructure, cool. But you won't get anyone to log into an additional site or click on additional buttons. The overhead of such a thing ususally simply isn't worth it... You have to learn it (so it provides an additional barrier to contribution = bad) and it takes some of your time (which we barely have anyway = bad). And it is not fun so why would a volunteer do it? We can't plan much anyway - I can surely say I will work on something but this is volunteer work: pretty much ANYTHING in life has priority over it.
This is not a KDE or promo specific thing - it is a general Free Software thing. You'll see very few if any projects use project management tools with the exception of those projects having a large paid workforce like Apache. But even the kernel doesn't do this. Some do use tools like Bugzilla for this to some extent, others plan on a wiki page (like KDE does - a bit, see our feature plan). But that is integrated in what people already use. A separate tool has very little chance of bringing any advantage.
I hope it helps explain why people are sceptical of the idea :D
Cheers,
Jos
--Boundary-01=_iHCrNWHPY0OBTkd-- --nextPart8101444.jieWeSpyFk Content-Type: application/pgp-signature; name=signature.asc Content-Description: This is a digitally signed message part. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2.0.16 (GNU/Linux) iEYEABECAAYFAk2sIeIACgkQ+wgQ1AD35iwrowCeLClLln4Zv07zNffJVoK1o+Mw FAwAoIIrWtgxLcs1zs8+vkMvOWOzqt9c =q2ze -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- --nextPart8101444.jieWeSpyFk-- --===============0388766013== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline _______________________________________________ This message is from the kde-promo mailing list. Visit https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/kde-promo to unsubscribe, set digest on or temporarily stop your subscription. --===============0388766013==--